


An Open Book

by spacehopper



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dream Sex, Dreams - Dream imagery and symbolism, Finger Sucking, Intercrural Sex, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Power Dynamics, Tentacles, Tentacles - Tentacle Bondage, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:22:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23603743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehopper/pseuds/spacehopper
Summary: Jon finds a locket, and opens more than he expected.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 5
Kudos: 60
Collections: Smut 4 Smut 2020





	An Open Book

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lovelit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelit/gifts).



Jon isn’t sure why he opens the drawer.

It’s not entirely surprising; the lack of certainty is a revelation he has only after it’s already open, to reveal an intricately patterned gold pendant in the shape of a book at the end of a gold chain. He picks it up before he can think better of it, running his fingers over it to find the grooves and hinges that keep it shut. A locket, though even as he tries to pry it open it remains stubbornly shut. Likely for the best, given any locket he finds in Elias’s office cannot possibly mean anything good.

Still, it frustrates him, even as he gathers the statements and tapes he’d come for, closing the door behind him with hopefully no one the wiser. And even if they are, if Elias is, what exactly is he going to do from prison? Send Jon a strongly worded letter? Get the ever absent Peter Lukas to reprimand him? Jon almost wishes he would. At least it would be something beyond the endless uncertainty, waiting for something he still doesn’t understand. That he isn’t sure he should be waiting for at all.

But there’s nothing to be done for it. So he puts it out of his mind. Sorts through the box. Reads a statement, and wishes it meant anything real. Learning that the Slaughter isn’t an imminent danger is a relief, but it isn’t what he’s looking for. It isn’t what he needs. With a sigh, he puts the box into the bottom drawer of his desk, and leaves it for another day.

Exhaustion lies heavy upon him, enough that he almost wants to go out. But that feels wrong, somehow. He can’t tell if the feeling is true knowledge, or simple guilt, but it’s as good a reason as any to stay. So he locks the door to his office, removes his shirt and shoes and trousers, leaving him in undershirt and underwear to collapse upon the cot he has kept here these past months. It’s better than sleeping on the floor, better than intruding on Melanie and Basira. Better than wandering the streets. There’s something almost comforting about the silence of the Archives, the press of a gaze he can’t escape anyway. At least here, he has some semblance of a twisted normality, an order to his world even as he finds himself an increasingly poor fit.

So he pulls the blankets closer, and drifts off to sleep.

* * *

The Archivist treads the terrible paths of nightmares new and stale. The engineer does not want to be Buried, and the doctor knows they are Not People. At her computer, a woman types and though it hurts she places each key into her mouth and chews and chews, and crunching teeth and plastic. When the Archivist finds the oldest dream, the fog barely clings to him, as he lifts his head to the sky.

And falls.

As his feet touch the ground again, it is not the clang of a ship’s deck, but an achingly familiar creak. Jon stands in his office, the old floorboards straining as his heart fails to pound in the terror he is sure he feels, a terror entirely different from the one to which he has become increasingly accustomed. But just as always, he follows where he must, up the stairs, through corridors filled with the shades of a terror that is not yet his, to a door he recognizes.

He turns the handle, and finds that even here the lock is broken. Or perhaps he’s simply permitted entry, as he steps inside to a room he can barely make out, cloaked in dark curtains. The only spot of light is a man at a desk, a small lamp switched on to illuminate a piece of paper, on which he is writing nothing, because he is seeing everything. When he looks up, Jon’s vision fractures. The man becomes more than himself, carved into forms Jon does not recognize, before settling into a pressed suit and a furrowed brow.

But still, he does not speak.

In dreams, it is Jon who drifts past silently, and though he does not even know if Elias can speak, he finds the blunt edge of his silence infuriating. After all, if he has to see Elias in his dreams, the least he could do is explain, show Jon why he’s here. Tell Jon why he left, what he’s hiding. The last angers Jon the most, enough to make him stride forward, intent on making himself known, even if the effort might be doomed.

He expects to be ignored; he does not expect to be caught. But as he makes his way to that small circle of light, something shoots out to grip his wrist, tightening as he tries to pull away. Whatever it is takes advantage of his distraction, because even as he finally manages to break free, another tendril grips his ankle, and a third his other wrist. All through this, Elias watches him silently, intent and vigilant but utterly immobile. Impassive in the face of the shouts Jon tries and fails to voice.

The tendrils—the tentacles—bring him to his knees, a distraction enough to drag Jon’s attention to his current predicament. He half-expects the cold embrace of the End, pulsing vines filled with dead blood. But these are warm, and though they throb with a liquid of their own, Jon does not think it is blood. They curl and shiver and brush his bare skin, wrapping his forearms and his calves. Binding him to this place, even as he struggles to turn, though whether to flee or to go back to his familiar nightmares he can no longer say. It hardly matters, because while their warmth remains, they still at the same sound that jerks Jon’s chin up. A chair being pushed back from a desk.

Elias’s footsteps echo strangely, as if he was treading on stone. When Jon looks down, he finds that this is true, that the weathered wood has hardened into shining granite, cold and smooth and unforgiving to his knees. And when he looks up, he sees that this is not Elias’s office, but a circular room empty of everything except them, and the curtains that still cover the walls. There is no lamp, but Elias seems to radiate a light of his own. Or perhaps Jon simply doesn’t need light to see him.

“Fascinating,” Elias says, crouching down in front of Jon. Not kneeling, that would be beneath his dignity. But still a position Jon did not expect to find Elias in, much as he didn’t anticipate the hand that reaches out, brushing a lock out of his face with a far too proprietary touch. “I will admit, I wasn’t quite sure what effect it might have, or that you would find it. But it certainly seems like it was worth the risk.”

“What are you talking about?” It takes Jon a moment to realize he spoke, that he can apparently speak. Long enough for Elias to stand again, too close and looming, forcing Jon to crane his neck.

Elias bends over, so that Jon can see nothing but his crisp white shirt, the pressed lapels of his jacket. The way his pulse thuds in his neck as his breath ghosts against Jon’s cheek, while his fingers slide along Jon’s bare shoulder, slide along his neck, until they fist around something Jon can’t see. That he doesn’t want to see.

Elias stands back up, still holding whatever he grasped, the chain not quite long enough for it to be comfortable, the links digging into the bag of Jon’s neck. Then he gets close enough for the tension to ease, opening his hand to reveal a familiar locket lying in the palm of his hand.

“How?” Jon asks, not sure what he’s asking at all. How did he get here, or how did it get here, or how is it that when Elias grips it, Jon feels warmth spark low in his gut. Lower than that, as Elias tugs it lightly again, and Jon finds himself leaning forward with it, hating Elias’s all too knowing smile, and his silent mouth.

“An heirloom of mine. A tether to me, that you’ve seen fit to adorn yourself with. Hence my interruption of your regular nightmares.” With his free hand, he gestures at the dark room around them.

“So take it off, then. And go away.” Jon jerks his head back, but even he knows the effort is half-hearted. This is the first chance he’s had to talk to Elias; he can’t waste it. “Or better yet, answer my questions.”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s what you really want.” He runs a thumb over the intricate patterns on the locket, and Jon shivers, and shivers again as Elias’s fingers find his hair, and begin to gently stroke it. “If you did, you wouldn’t have put it on in the first place.”

“I didn’t put it on, I don’t know how—” He sees Elias’s lips curl, and then there’s a flash. Memory, but not his own, though the eyes belong to him. Picking up the locket, regarding it, and yes, putting it around his neck. Giving the room a furtive glance before he grabs the box and strides out of Elias’s office. “I—I don’t remember doing that.”

“Memory is a strange thing, isn’t it? So much of what you do isn’t remembered. Instinct, and muscle memory, and the habits we form.” His fingers dig into Jon’s scalp, and though Jon tries to pull away, the tentacles tighten their hold on him, forcing him to relax, pushing him into the touch.

“How can putting on a locket I’ve never seen before be habit? I think you mean mind control, or some other sort of—” Another memory, but this is his. Walking into a cafe, and he hadn’t meant to be there. But it feels right, and so he takes. He sucks in a breath, and the weight of the locket falls back against his chest.

“Exactly,” Elias says, stepping away finally, though still not far enough he’s easy to see. “But the philosophical minutiae are more the Web’s area. My point is simply that whatever drove you to it, it wasn’t true mind control. You wanted to put it on, a desire so fundamental that your conscious mind didn’t register the act as anything other than natural. No more noteworthy than brushing your teeth or combing your hair.”

A statement he punctuates by leaning closer again, to run his fingers along Jon’s scalp, undoing tangles that should not be there. Soft and knowing, until there is no resistance to his ministrations, the strands slipping softly through his grasp even as Jon shivers and desperately tries to grasp for the objection he knows he must have.

“Tell me then, why did I want to be here, if you know so much? If it’s not to ask you questions, like you said.” His voice lifts at the end into a shout, and he hates how desperate it makes him sound, hates the way the tentacles cling to him tighter as he tries to escape their grasp. But he doesn’t care; he needs to know. Only Elias can give him that.

“You want to be shown. You want to be told. You are a receptacle for power, seeking a well to fill you.” Slowly, he traces a finger along Jon’s cheek, stopping at the corner of his mouth. “I can do that. At least for now.”

Jon flushes, but does not try to pull away. Not when Elias’s hand is so cool, so gentle. What harm is there, in this? There is struggle enough with his thoughts, with the tendrils holding him, with the cold weight of the pendant dragging on his neck. Pulling his head down, making his breath stutter as he realizes he is fully naked. Utterly exposed, as he lifts his head again to Elias’s eyes.

“What’s happening to me?”

“Only what you want, deep down. If you wish to escape, simply will it. This is your dream, after all.”

Jon swallows hard, fighting down the urge to argue with Elias, to tell him he’s wrong. If he were awake, he thinks he would do just that, could summon defiance and delusion in equal measure to throw it in Elias’s face.

But here, when he focuses, the tentacles that hold him weaken, and when he listens, he can hear the desperate cries of the nightmares he could still return to, fond and foul intertwined. A place where he follows a path he does not understand, where he looks for answers he will not find, where he seeks guidance under the gaze of an empty eye.

“Is this real?” Jon says, finally. Knowing the answer, but needing Elias to say it anyway.

“Am I some fantasy you conjured up? No. Though I suppose I’d say that regardless. But we both know your dreams are inhabited by real people, don’t we?” The last he says with such fondness that the shame that curdles in his stomach is offset by a warmth he still shies away from naming.

“What happens if I do what you say?”

“You get what you want.”

The urge to argue is weaker now. In this dream world, Jon knows what Elias means. What he promises. That he will trawl through Jon’s mind, excavate the dark corners and unearth desires he knows he is failing to control, failing to hide. Regardless of what happens, it will all break free soon.

He doesn’t want to decide.

And so he parts his lips as Elias presses insistent fingers against them, letting his eyes fall shut as he sucks on them. Salt and ink and metal, and he lets them push in deeper, holding down on his tongue and forcing his silence, even as Elias’s other hand gently strokes his hair. His fingers begin to draw back, stroking along the twitching muscle of Jon’s tongue, sending sparks he knows should not be struck down his spine. Lower still, as Elias begins to withdraw, and Jon’s tongue desperately curls around him. Hungry for something he cannot name, something he knows Elias can give him, the small relief of touch and taste as his fingers slide back in, too much and not enough as they fill Jon’s mouth. As the sensation fills his cock.

His eyes spring open, and Elias’s hand tightens in his hair. Holding him, even as the grip on his arms and legs loosens, and he tries desperately to stand. This can’t go on, he doesn’t want this, though his body’s reaction betrays his lie. A lie he spits from his mouth, leaving him gasping, trying to follow Elias’s fingers even as he begins to fade.

“You’re not ready, yet.”

The disappointment stings, and Jon wants to shout that he would be ready, if only Elias would tell him what he needed to be ready for. But it’s too late; the chain has snapped, and the book will no longer open. He scrambles for a locket that is no longer around his neck, even as his legs drag him up, and the room is enfolded in darkness.

Letting him fall once again.

* * *

He awakens with a gasp, fingers scrabbling at his neck where a chain has tightened around it. Foolish, to wear it sleeping, a thought he now remembered having and dismissing when he crawled into bed. It doesn’t matter now; it didn’t matter then. He knows this can’t kill him anymore. And far more pressing is the drag of the sweat drenched duvet tightened around his body, the aching press of his cock. He frees himself, shoving aside the offending fabric in a daze as one hand grips his cock, and the other holds the locket. Tightening so the metal digs into flesh, bucking into the slick heat of his hand and finding no relief. He shuts eyes, turns over. Lets one hand drop to the side even as the other continues to grasp for a feeling he knows now he’ll never capture here. That he cannot capture without those sweet, terrible words and the pull of things he dares not name.

Sleep doesn’t find him again, and eventually he drags himself into a cold shower. Suffused with its empty chill, he almost manages to forget the gnaw of desire. At the Institute, he’ll get rid of the locket. It belongs in Artefact Storage, or maybe an incinerator. Or maybe Basira can make something of it, prying it open to understand what secrets it might contain.

All Jon knows is that there is one place it cannot remain. Encircling his neck, tighter and tighter until it drags him into depths he does not want. That he desires all the same.

* * *

Elias circles Jon, weaving a path around him that seems to tighten Jon’s throat, stop his breath with every additional pass. At first he is silent, and Jon answers with silence of his own. Held on display by the dark throbbing tentacles, no longer on his knees but instead spread for inspection, though Elias seems not to care to do more than look. But his eyes are enough, dragging along Jon’s skin even as his face remains blank. His eyes are enough, and too much when he finally deigns to slide one finger along Jon’s chest, letting it hook in the chain.

“Ah, you kept the locket. I was hoping you would.” His lips quirk into a smile, smugness undercut by a fondness that makes Jon want to shy away from his touch, if he could shy away.

“I forgot,” Jon snaps, but the protest felt flat even in his head, and all the weaker for having been voiced.

“Really, Archivist?” The title strikes his chest as Elias drops the chain. “How careless, to leave something so dangerous uncontained.”

His fingers find Jon’s lips, tracing the edges. Jon’s tongue darts out to taste them, and then again to have more. On their tips, he can see things, feel things that he knows he needs, that Elias will give him if only he asks. But the words stop in his throat, and Elias steps away, leaving Jon’s mouth open and empty of anything but hollow protests.

“I’m a bit busy, you might’ve noticed.” He sounds breathless; he hates it, and loves the way it brings Elias closer. “I know you’re watching.” There is a flare of heat in his chest as the certainty of his words wash over him, the metal of the locket burning against his skin, flowing lower as his cock stirs with an interest he can hardly deny.

“Busy?” Elias laughs. “You’re anything but. No, Jon. What you are is curious. And moreso than usual, you’re lost. I can help with both.”

Jon responds with a laugh of his own, though one far more touched with a bitter edge. “When have you ever helped with anything?”

“At every step, I have helped in all the ways you needed.” When Jon opens his mouth to protest, Elias stops it with a finger against his lips. “It has not always been what you want. But it is what you need.” The finger slips inside, and Jon cannot hide the moan at the welcome intrusion, the only sound he makes as Elias silences his empty protests.

Elias slips another finger into his mouth, and Jon welcomes it as well, sucking on it desperately. As if in this touch, he might find what he seeks, drawing the secrets from Elias’s skin. But revelation doesn’t come. Though his body strains closer, his cock now leaking under the assault of sensations he cannot name, cannot suppress, Elias denies him still. Remains at a distance, toying with the locket, staring at something beyond Jon’s sight.

“Open your eyes, Jon.”

The command is soft but insistent. Jon wants to obey, but he doesn’t understand. His eyes are open, and he shakes his head, letting out a whimper of loss as Elias pulls his fingers free and sighs. He lifts the locket in his hand, tracing the intricately carved eyes, layered upon each other in patterns that promise knowledge, if only Jon can resolve them into the words he knows they must form. His lips try to shape the question, but before he can, Elias slips the locket into his mouth, where it sits heavy on his tongue.

“Look, Jon.” His hand finds Jon’s hair, and tugs his head towards walls. The same velvet curtains from before muffle them on all sides. Still, he shakes his head, struggling against the weight of the locket on his tongue. The patterns seem to press in, the edges marking the sensitive skin of his mouth until he can no longer deny the feeling, even if he still doesn’t understand where it comes from.

The tentacles tighten around his arms, pull them from his sides, to leave him more exposed than ever. Elias leans closer, pressing a kiss to his forehead. The damp remnant of it remains even as he withdraws, circling behind Jon to place his hands upon Jon’s waist, leaning close again to whisper in his ear. Against his skin, Jon can feel that Elias is no longer clothed, the hard line of his cock pressed against Jon’s arse. But it isn’t this that makes him shiver, but the words Elias murmurs in his ear.

“Open all your eyes.”

The curtains draw back.

Eyes are the windows to the soul, and perhaps this is Jon’s soul now, for where there should be windows, there are only eyes. He moans in protest, in terror, and perhaps something else, as his cock jumps and his vision doubles, triples. The onslaught is overwhelming, countless impossible angles that his mind struggles to comprehend, until slowly they resolve into a whole that is as much feeling as sight. All focused on him, bound by unseen tentacles emerging from the floor, open and waiting while Elias watches and smiles and knows. Like this, he can no longer avoid the sight of his own cock, bobbing as he shifts, seeking a comfort he can no longer claim he doesn’t desire. Seeking a release he has given to Elias entirely.

And Elias gives it to him, even as the tentacles adjust Jon, lift him slightly and press his legs together so that Elias can slip between the skin, the head of his cock brushing Jon’s balls. He whimpers as Elias jerks against him, far too much and still not enough as Elias drags his fingernails down Jon’s torso, and his voice rumbles in Jon’s chest.

“Very good, Jon. You’re doing so beautifully, this is all going far better than I expected. And I did have high expectations of you; your progress has been dramatic. But now you deserve a reward, don’t you think?”

Jon nods desperately, not even sure what he’s agreeing to, still not sure what he wants. But no longer needing to know. Not with Elias showing him the way. Even as the bright spark of vision fades, and the eyes around him grow strange and dark again, the image is branded in his mind. On display, exactly as Elias desires.

“Excellent. You’re very lonely, aren’t you?”

The pang at the reminder is one Jon tries to shove away, but he cannot unsee the way he flinches, the way his fingers reach towards the only person who can truly see him, the only one who might still be willing to touch him as he is.

“Inside that locket, I’ve left…let’s call it a part of me. Enough that you no longer need to be lonely. A fragment, so that even if I’m not with you, not looking, I’ll still see you, still feel you. And you’ll know I’m there.” His hand loosely circles Jon’s cock, and Jon wants to move in it, wants the release that it offers. But the tentacles hold him, and Elias holds him, and he is no longer sure they are not one and the same. So instead he nods, and knows it is the wrong thing even as he nearly breaks from how right it feels. “Good.”

Elias thrusts his hips forward, the slide of him against Jon’s skin leaving a trail of impossible sparks. Is it because this is a dream, or because of who they are? It hardly matters, because either way, he needs this and yes, he wants this. More than he has ever wanted anything.

“Then open the book, Jon. Open up to me.”

Part of Jon wants to ask how he could possibly be more open. Elias holds him bound and vulnerable, on display for them both and as inescapable as he has always needed to be. But he knows even now he holds back. Elias’s hand leaves his cock, and though part of Jon aches at the loss, his attention turns to the metal rectangle in his mouth.

As Elias moves against him, Jon’s mind grows distant, tracing the whorls of metal with his tongue. Each thrust solicits a moan, a gasp, a whimper that does not pass his lips. Cannot pass his lips, because they all flow into the locket, a bright burning core that is echoed in his cock. His tongue strokes across the cover, and he feels an echo in himself, an echo in Elias who laughs quiet and breathless in his ear. His cock still sliding against Jon’s skin, as the tentacles pull his legs tired, perfect for Elias to take all Jon wants to offer, that he still dares not voice.

“You’re not looking, Jon.”

The admonishment hurts, as does the dig of Elias’s fingers into a raised scar along his hip. But he knows the reminder is needed, because he sees it all through mortal eyes, and knows that isn’t enough. So he presses the book to the roof of his mouth, and stares into the eyes surrounding him, and again he stares out at himself. At Elias, flushed and pleased behind him. At the hand Elias slowly runs down Jon’s chest, gripping his cock and tugging it hard, even as Jon sucks harder on the locket, desperate to keep it contained, to do as Elias says. Knowing that if he does, he will have everything and always and all he desires. All Elias desires for him.

“Perfect,” he whispers into Jon’s ear, his hips stuttering. “My exquisite Archivist.”

The moan echoes in Jon’s throat, and Elias drinks it in with his fingers. Perhaps later, Jon will be able to taste the memory of it on Elias’s skin. But for now, the hand returns to Jon’s cock, tugging and teasing even as Elias takes his own pleasure from Jon’s body. A gift Jon cannot help but give. One he keeps giving, even as Elias’s hand tightens, and he finds himself tipping towards the edge, the tap of Elias’s cock against his tightening balls and the tang of metal overwhelming him.

The mechanism grinds in his mouth, and then Jon feels it all, the terror and the desire. He sees himself from all sides and from within, from Elias’s eyes. Possessed and molded and shaped into something more than he could ever hope to be. Held up on display as Elias’s teeth dig into his shoulder and one his hand tightens on Jon’s hip, caught on the edge and waiting for the final latch to click.

And then it does, and as if a cord was cut, Jon slumps forward, held up only by the tentacles, the hand still on his waist. He whimpers as the contents of the locket coat his tongue, not true liquid but something which has taken its form, sliding down his throat as Elias murmurs words he doesn’t understand in his ear, and slowly words him through the aftershocks. Coming himself against Jon’s skin, as he repeats words Jon still doesn’t quite believe, but welcomes all the same.

Slowly he withdraws from Jon, a loss he does not have long to mourn as Elias comes around to his front, where he is still held aloft. He takes Jon’s face in his hands, and presses a kiss to his mouth, his own tongue trailing along the locket. It closes again, hiding whatever secrets it holds, the replacement for what it has lost.

And then he pulls it free, and shakes his head at Jon’s protest as he slips it around his neck.

“You had your fun. I think it’s only fair I have mine as well.” The curtains slip shut, and Elias begins to fade. But this time it doesn’t matter; Jon is fading with him. Following him into a half-state of wakefulness, alone in his bed. But somehow held as well, arms wrapped around him, and lips against this neck.

He doesn’t understand what Elias wants. And perhaps he still doesn’t know what he needs. As the sunlight cuts through this hazy after-dream, he wonders if he will forget. If he will regret. 

But as he turns onto his back, his hand finds the locket still around his neck. Lying open, though when he swipes his fingers inside he finds that it is empty. Memory washes over him, a sweet wave of guilt and horror at what he did. What he may do again, to fill these pages. He snaps the locket shut, and gets to his feet, wincing as he sees the results of the dream on his body, the dampness seeping through his underwear. 

And yet even as he tosses the soiled clothing aside, heading into the shower to seek relief in the hot water, he finds his hand on the locket again. Stroking the whorls of the design, and feeling a shiver as something—someone—strokes him in turn. A presence some part of him can no longer reject. A rightness that clicks into place as he snaps the locket open, and a warmth entirely unlike the water washes over him. 

Maybe it was a a mistake. But it doesn’t matter. What has opened cannot be shut again.

**Author's Note:**

> The locket in question is based roughly on [this real Victorian locket](https://www.langantiques.com/antique-book-locket-1.html), and others like it.


End file.
